Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today, writes the New Yorkers Adam Gopnik. Over all, there are now more people under correctional supervision in America - more than 6 million - than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. Thats not just many more than in most other developed countries but seven to 10 times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and ­Britain - with a rate among the ­highest - has 153... ...This wide gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world is relatively recent... ...More than half of Americas federal inmates today are in prison on drug convictions. In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans were arrested on drug charges, more than were arrested on assault or larceny charges. And 4 of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession... ...Conservatives and liberals love to sound tough on crime, and both sides agreed in the 1990s to a wide range of new federal infractions, many of them carrying mandatory sentences for time in state or federal prison. And as always in American politics, there is the money trail. Many state prisons are now run by private companies that have powerful lobbyists in state capitals... ...In 2011, California spent $9.6 billion on prisons vs. $5.7 billion on the UC system and state colleges. Since 1980, California has built one college campus and 21 prisons. A college student costs the state $8,667 per year; a prisoner costs it $45,006 a year.

When the phalanx of freepers invariably comment on this thread about how we have a criminal problem and not a prison industrial complex problem, ask them just how many Americans per 100k population would need to be incarcerated before they’d consider the problem to be the prison-industrial complex, and not the criminality of the population.

I do think prison reform is a worthwhile discussion. I’m not talking about individuals who have harmed others, but the ones we incarcerate for relatively minor crimes as to whether that’s the best way to deal with them.

7
posted on 03/29/2012 8:07:58 PM PDT
by Jonty30
(What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults.)

" . . . ask them just how many Americans per 100k population would need to be incarcerated before theyd consider the problem to be the prison-industrial complex, and not the criminality of the population."

If you are a male, 26 years of age, you have a one in four chance of incarceration on any given day.

When I was a 26 year old male I was an active freeper.
My life experiences watching guys I knew from school, work, socially go through the meatgrinder that is the legal/prison industry in NJ/NY has turned two entire generations against the ‘rule of law’ as has been dictated to us in our lives.

As this recession turned into a lost decade, the few remaining people our age living inside the bubble look more and more like gerbils to a larger and larger majority of the population. A population that is no more or less criminally inclined than any prior generation, but burdened with millions of pages of new laws and regulations that all result in imprisonment and/or probation/supervisory sentences.

Worse yet, this attitude is also held by the vast majority of LEOs near my age too. Speed traps on gerbils bring in revenue. As LEOs in NJ/NY have fixed pensions that kick in early, large numbers of baby boomer LEOs are retiring every day (earlier than almost all private sector baby boomers and even most public sector baby boomers in comparison), being replaced with a new doctrinal attitude... etc.

"If you are a male, 26 years of age, you have a one in four chance of incarceration on any given day."

Something is wrong with that statistic. If true it means the 26 year old has 75% chance of staying out of jail today. Another 75% chance of staying out tomorrow if he makes it through today. The chance of staying out of jail for a whole week would be .75 x .75 x .75 x .75 x .75 x .75 x .75 = 13%. Continue for a month and the odds of staying out of jail drop to one in 5,000.

Due process? That shouldn’t require 15 or 20 years. Offing convicted murderers beats the hell out of feeding and housing them until they die of old age. The savings would be astronomical. How much do you think has been spent on assholes like Charles Manson? (And HE’S not even on death row.)

A population that is no more or less criminally inclined than any prior generation, but burdened with millions of pages of new laws and regulations that all result in imprisonment and/or probation/supervisory sentences.

This is what our older FReepers (I'm in my 7th decade) do not appreciate. The toll upon younger males due to all these regulations and the apparatus in place to provide the Matrix. It's a national disgrace.

apples VS oranges....our prisoners are worthless trash that prey upon other folks. In most of those other countries, a large number of prisoners are political prisoners.....if you don’t like Castro, and say so, chances are that you are going to jail.....not so here...good thing too, we don’t have 310,000,000 cells available.

20
posted on 03/29/2012 8:52:41 PM PDT
by terycarl
(lurking, but well informed)

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